Heriot-Watt University
Heriot-Watt University
Research Gateway
Prosocial media in action
Fatkin, Jane-Marie; Lansdown, Terry
Published in:
Computers in Human Behavior
DOI:
10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.060
Publication date:
2015
Document Version
Accepted author manuscript
Link to publication in Heriot-Watt University Research Gateway
Citation for published version (APA):
Fatkin, J-M., & Lansdown, T. (2015). Prosocial media in action. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 581-586.
DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.060
General rights
Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners
and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately
and investigate your claim.
ProSocial Media
ProSocial Media in Action
Abstract
Online social media has been criticized by social psychologists as ineffective in
providing significant social change to such a degree that the term ‘Slacktivism’ has been
coined as a counter term to online ‘Activism.’ Yet, research to support this theory is
inadequate. To understand more about the activism/slacktivism debate, two events were
studied that occurred in close proximity in the winter of 2013 and 2014- Giving Tuesday and
“SnowedOutAtlanta.” Giving Tuesday began in 2012 in the United States as a way to give
back to charitable organizations during the holiday season following the chaotic consumerism
displayed during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In 2013, other countries followed suit to
make it a world-wide online giving phenomenon. The Facebook, group “SnowedOutAtlanta”
was created by Atlanta resident, Michelle Sollicito after two inches of snow created a traffic
gridlock in Atlanta that quickly turned chaotic. She sensed a strong need and created an open,
online Facebook group where people could easily join and connect to one another. A content
analysis was conducted on the tweets from Giving Tuesday 2013 and from the Facebook
group page “SnowedOutAtlanta” 2014. Does social media provide a meaningful forum for
prosocial helping behavior and if so, how and why people are giving of their time, money,
and resources? These two events provide insight into the current ‘Slacktivism’ debate.
Keywords: Prosocial behaviour; Slacktivism; social media
1
ProSocial Media
Introduction
The aim of the current study is to further examine the “Slacktivism” debate that
argues that social media encourages a lazy form of activism and is not a place for meaningful
social change (Morozov, 2011). Slacktivism, coined by Morozov, (2011) is a term that
describes the lazy, ineffectiveness of online activism. It is also described as low-cost, lowrisk online activism (Lee & Hsieh, 2013). “Clicktivism’ is a term used interchangeably with
slacktivism, which signifies the ease of which individuals can click on an online petition or a
social media activist page and feel like they are actually helping. Other researchers agree that
online social and political activity often fails to achieve real world change and that the only
success it brings is a mere Twitter ‘retweet’ or a Facebook ‘like’ or ‘share’ (Conroy et al,
2012). Slacktivists are wary of online activism and think that individuals need to guard
against it, making sure it doesn't stop real action (Kavner, 2012). There is a strong criticism
that these prosocial online tactics do not have a significant lasting effect because activism
associated with social media is dependent upon weak tie relationships such as Twitter
followers and Facebook ‘friends’ that are merely acquaintances whereas meaningful activism
requires a strong, robust, organizational structure (Morozov, 2011). Morozov (2011) posits
that the internet is nothing but a net delusion that is defined by cyber utopianism and internet
centrism that blinds us to an evolving internet landscape that may actually limit democratic
possibilities.
Yet, many researchers disagree with this pessimistic view. For example, Lee & Hseih
(2013) found that exposure to online activism influenced individual decision on subsequent
civic actions. For instance, participants that signed an online petition were significantly more
likely to donate to charity which demonstrated a consistency effect (Lee & Hseih, 2013).
Other researchers point out that the unique platform that social media supplies, enables
participants to engage cheaply and easily (Coleman & Blumler, 2009). Another advantage of
online activism is the ability to reach a large number of people with minimal effort and at low
cost, hence potentially increasing public awareness of a social or political issue/movement.
By creating awareness of issues, mobilization of citizens is also made possible (Christensen,
2011). In addition, the act of public awareness is often the first step towards fixing a problem,
doing good deeds, or creating change (Conway 2012; Golsborough 2011).
Social media has become a popular venue that fosters various forms of online
activism. With its ease of use and immense popularity, social media, also coined social
2
ProSocial Media
network sites (SNS) have experienced a massive boom since their creation a few years ago,
and it has now become the most popular activity on the internet (Qualman 2009). Boyd &
Ellison (2008) define SNS as web based services that allow individuals to ‘1) construct a
public or semi-public profile within a bounded system 2) articulate a list of other users with
whom they share a connections 3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made
by others within the system’ (pg. 211). Facebook is the largest and most popular social media
site with over 1.2 billion monthly users worldwide and over 1.6 billion page views per day
(Sedghi, 2014). Facebook is also the top photo-sharing site on the web with more than 14
million photos posted everyday (Stone, Zickler, & Darrell, 2010). Facebook provides the
opportunity for users to create their own profiles where they can post information about
themselves, their educational background, work history, hobbies and interests, relationship
information, and post pictures. Users can also send private and public messages to friends as
well as share videos and pictures. Currently with over 800 million users and translated in over
70 different languages, Facebook is a unique tool in understanding social interaction and
online behaviour.
Slacktivism will be examined through two events where social media played a vital
role in helping behaviour. These events were Giving Tuesday 2013 and
SnowedOutAtlanta2014. These two events were chosen because of the accessibility of data
along with their relevance during the time of data collection. In addition, both events were
created in an on-line environment in response to a social need.
Giving Tuesday began in 2012 in the United States as a way to give back to charitable
organizations during the holiday season in response to the chaotic consumerism displayed
during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In 2013, other countries followed suit to make it a
world-wide online giving phenomenon. This event trended on twitter with the hashtags
#GivingTuesday and #Unselfie as thousands tweeted about their donations or volunteer
efforts. The term ‘unselfie’ was created for this event and individuals were urged to take a
picture of themselves giving back or donating to a good cause and upload it to their Instagram
or twitter accounts.
The Facebook group “SnowedOutAtlanta” was created by Atlanta resident, Michelle
Sollicito after two inches of snow created a traffic gridlock in Atlanta that quickly turned
chaotic. Children were stranded in schools, people were stuck in their cars, with no place to
sleep (Garner, 2014). Sollicito checked her Facebook that night and saw friends offering help
or asking for help on her Facebook feed but they were not connected. She sensed a strong
3
ProSocial Media
need and created an open, online Facebook group where people could easily join and connect
to one another. In less than 24 hours the group gained over 50,000 members (Kendall, 2014).
Group members banded together and offered their assistance and resources to those in need.
Two weeks later the group was reactivated as a second winter storm hit Atlanta. Sollicito was
praised for her efforts and labeled the ‘Snow Angel of Atlanta’ to which she replied ‘To those
who say that I single-handedly united all the people of Atlanta, I tell them that I did it with
the help of 50,000 friends, and an awesome tool called Facebook’ (Sollicito, 2014).
Yet, these two events are just two examples of online activism and Prosocial
Behaviour. I hypothesize that the ‘Slacktivism’ argument is not only overly cynical, but also
that online activism can have a profound effect on society. Both Giving Tuesday 2013 and
SnowedOutAtlanta resulted in a unique communication medium where help could be offered
and received that could not have occurred prior to social media’s creation.
To understand more about Prosocial Behaviour in a social media setting and how and
why people are giving of their time, money, and resources; a content analyses was conducted
on the tweets from Giving Tuesday 2013 and from the Facebook group page
“SnowedOutAtlanta” 2014.
Research Questions and Hypotheses
Research Question 1: Is social media only a place for online Slactivism? Or does true online
activism exist?
Research Question 2: Why, how, and when do people help on social media sites?
Hypothesis 1: ‘Slacktivism’ is too cynical a view and true online activism does exist.
Hypothesis 2: People help on social media sites in similar ways as they do offline. People see
a need and they fill that need. Yet, the scope of how people can help is much larger as social
media bridges spaces and connects individuals that otherwise would not be connected.
4
ProSocial Media
Method
Participants
16,493 tweets were downloaded from Tuesday, December 3, 2013 from 5:10am until
5:10pm using the hashtags #GivingTuesday and #Unselfie. The 12-hour time slot aimed to
capture an entire workday on Twitter in hopes of maximizing on online user engagement. In
addition, 371 Facebook posts were downloaded from the group page SnowedOutAtlanta on
January 29, 2014, and 235 posts were downloaded from February 13, 2014.
Procedure
Tweets were downloaded using an open access Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet
(TAGS version 5.1, created by Martin Hawkseye) using the hash tags #GivingTuesday and
#Unselfie. 16,493 tweets were collected from Tuesday, December 3, 2013 from 5:10am until
5:10pm. A content analysis was performed on the tweets. A content analysis is beneficial in
capturing patterns and themes in large amounts of data. The tweets, since high in volume,
were analyzed by searching for certain key terms in Microsoft excel. These search terms led
to commonalities and patterns among the tweets. For example, it was quickly evident that a
charity entitled the Salvation Army had many tweets. Once identified it was easy to use
excel to count the tweets with Salvation Army within the tweet. Then, systematic ways of
identifying the donor organizations were used to identify charities with multiple supporters.
In many cases the @ sign was used to identify the re-tweeter, or the organization that the
original tweet was designed to support. The text function was used to identify the first and
second @ tweeted, and the result was sorted alphabetically. Next, since, many of the tweets
referenced an http site; this text was extracted and matched for the same http. Finally, an
attempt was made to match the tweeter against the charity to see if the tweeter was a potential
donor, or a charity requesting support or thanking a tweeter. Figure 1 below describes the
content analysis procedure used for the Giving Tuesday Tweets.
Figure 1: Content Analysis Procedure for Giving Tuesday Tweets
1. Search for key terms (i.e. volunteer, help, charity)  2. Identify donor
organisation  3. Search for the “@ sign” to find retweets or donor
organisations  4. Identify http sites that are referenced  5. Match the
tweeter against the charity
5
ProSocial Media
The 606 Facebook posts were downloaded using the Facebook analytics page and
then copy and pasted into an Excel spreadsheet. The 606 posts were just a small sample of the
multitude of posts that were made to the Facebook group. The first 371 Facebook posts were
downloaded on January 29, 2014, and the first 235 posts were downloaded from February 13,
2014. Although there were thousands of posts, only the first 600 were used to keep the data
analysis manageable while also providing a meaningful look into the online themes during
SnowedOutAtlanta.
The first The Facebook posts were analyzed and categorized into themes manually
using a qualitative approach called ‘Thematic Analysis’ (Howitt & Cramer, 2008). Thematic
analysis is a widely used analytic technique in the social sciences (Braun & Clarke, 2006;
Aronson, 1994; Joffe, 2011). This approach relies highly on data familiarization. The data
goes through a process where it is continuously coded and modified until clear themes are
identified and supported with examples from the tweets and posts themselves (Howitt &
Cramer, 2008).
Results
Overview
A high volume of tweets were downloaded from the 12-hour period. The Tweets were then
analyzed using key word searches in excel and identifying patterns and themes among the
tweets. A large variety of charities were mentioned as well as tweets from famous
celebrities. The celebrity tweets helped promote Giving Tuesday and resulted in the most
retweets. The SnowedOutAtlanta Facebook posts were categorized manually. The main
categories that emerged from the posts were as follows: problem resolved, thanks, help
needed, help offered, prayers, information requested, suggestions provided, information
provided, complaints, provide praise, bump, and comments.
Giving Tuesday Tweets
16,493 tweets were collected from the 12-hour period. The downloaded tweet data
included the identification stream, the user, the tweet itself, the user’s language, the time of
the tweet, the profile of the tweeter, the source of the tweet, the profile image of the user, the
user follower count, the user friends count, and the status url. Tweets were posted from
individuals, businesses, and charities. First, the duplicate tweets were eliminated which
6
ProSocial Media
dramatically reduced the tweets to 9,452. With 1826 tweets, the Salvation Army surpassed
the others by a wide margin. Then, systematic ways of identifying the donor organizations
were used to identify charities with multiple supporters.
Using all these techniques, 8122 of the 9452 tweets were categorized. Once these
tweets were categorized, the remaining tweets were individually analyzed, to include actually
looking at the internet site that was available if it was tweeted. The following charities were
mentioned (Table 1 lists those with more than 20 tweets). A broad range of charities were
referenced, including local charities such as the YMCA, local parks, national parks, along
with well-known charities such as the American Heart Association and the Salvation Army.
Tweeters included the charities themselves, who, in general were either thanking tweeters for
their support or tweeting have donors consider their charity for giving Tuesday.
Approximately 4553 tweets identified as supporting a specific charity, 1965 tweets could not
be identified to a specific charity with a large portion of this supporting Giving Tuesday.
1534 tweets were identified as having been tweeted by a charity.
Table 1: Charities Mentioned in Giving Tuesday Tweets
Tweets by
Tweets by Others
Total Tweets
Charity
Salvation Army
8
1828
1836
Giving Tuesday
0
1965
1965
Food Banks
23
267
290
UN Foundation
23
179
202
Free the Children
0
126
126
Upworthy
7
111
117
Girlup
0
111
109
ADRAIntl
9
61
70
PFFOrg
37
30
67
NASPA
12
47
59
7
ProSocial Media
FamilyLivesOn
48
9
57
Autism
47
8
55
Donors Choose
8
44
52
University of California
15
36
51
Cancer
5
45
50
SAALLSTARS
15
30
45
Snap2Live
3
41
44
Good Will
27
16
43
Free Morgan
1
36
37
Smithsonian
4
33
37
UNvolunteers
6
31
37
Awearness
13
23
36
Habitat for Humanity
14
22
36
American Heart Assn
3
29
32
Red Cross
6
26
32
United Way
18
14
32
Climate
7
24
31
International Teams
14
16
30
Dalai Lama Fellows
13
18
31
Cystic Fibrosis
2
28
30
UNDP
9
21
30
IndieGoGo
6
22
28
Baycrest Foundation
7
21
28
AfricanArtOutreach
8
ProSocial Media
STEM Fields
13
12
25
BBBSA
9
18
27
Unicef
0
26
26
ShotAtLife
9
14
23
Ronald McDonald
9
12
21
Several of the categories uncovered interesting results. The Salvation Army tweets
were, by far, the largest of any charity. These tweets appear to be generated from 3 tweets
from people with a large following. First, Austin Mahone, a pop singer with 4.7 million
followers, tweeted an unselfie. In the next 120 seconds, 530 tweets were sent in support of
Giving Tuesday, 512 of which were re-tweets of Austin Mahone’s tweets. A total of 1,733 of
the Austin Mahone re-tweets resulted. In addition, Kelly Rowland, a singer with a 5.7
million twitter following, tweeted, with a result of 75 re-tweets, including one by the
XfactorUSA with almost 2.5 million followers. Duane Reade, with over 1.4 million followers
generated 9 tweets for the Westside YMCA in NYC. The Smithsonian with over a 1 million
followers generated 37 tweets for their African Outreach program. A tweet generated by Jean
Michel Cousteau with 27,000 followers generated 37 tweets to save Morgan the captured
ORCA. DeNada Brewing Company offered $1 for every re-tweet up to $250. They got 243
re-tweets in the 12-hour period analysed.
In addition, published articles about Giving Tuesday were the source of many tweets,
most of which did not identify a specific charity. The Forbes article generated five charity
and 28 non charity tweets, a Huffington Post article generated four and 22, respectively, and
article by Matthew Bishop generated two and 25 respectively, and George Kelly article zero
and 20. Also, over 237 tweets were generated to support giving Tuesday in honour of the
cartoon Newpaper comic feature “Peanuts” represented by the tweet @Snoopy, the initial
tweet being generated by the Peanuts tweet with 195,000 followers as shown below in Table
2.
Table 2: Published Giving Tuesday Articles and Snoopy
9
ProSocial Media
Tweets by
Tweets by Others
Total Tweets
Organisation
Snoopy (IHO)
0
237
237
Forbes Unselfie Article
5
25
30
George Kelly Article
0
24
24
Huffington Post Article
4
20
24
Matthew Bishop Article
2
18
20
Other General themes that were uncovered in the analysis include volunteer which
was mentioned in 177 tweets, children, or kids in 485, youth in 81 , women in 118 and girls
in 166 as shown below in Table 3.
Table 3: Other General Themes
Number of Tweets
Volunteer
117
Children/Kids
485
Youth
81
Women
118
Girls
166
Total
967
SnowedOutAtlanta
SnowedOutAtlanta was different from Giving Tuesday in that it was created by a
local citizen (Michelle Sollicito) because of an immediate need to offer help to those who
10
ProSocial Media
were stranded or stuck due to weather conditions in Atlanta, Georgia. Because of the longer
format and the fewer number of posts, they were analyzed and coded manually. The main
categories that emerged from the analysis were as follows: problem resolved, thanks, help
needed, help offered, prayers, information requested, suggestions provided, information
provided, complaints, provide praise, bump, and comments. An example of a post from the
problem ‘resolved’ category is ‘She made it home finally at 9:30 this morning. Thank u all
for the help and prayers.’ An example post from the category ‘Thanks’ is ‘YOU are
awesome!! Thank you for helping!!’ Table 4 below shows an example from each category.
Table 4: SnowedOutAtlanta Category Examples
Examples
Problem Resolved
‘She made it home finally at 9:30 this morning. Thank u all for
the help and prayers.’
Thanks
‘YOU are awesome!! Thank you for helping!!’
Help Needed
‘My brother and sister in law are stuck at exit 7 on 285 heading
towards 85. She's pregnant and he's handicapped. Their phones
died at 1am and we've lost contact, but I don't think that area is
moving...does anyone know? They've been out there since 11:30
yesterday morning.’
Help Offered
‘I'm off I-20, exit 59- if your close and need shelter, good,
blanket- you name it! Please respond to this and I'll make it your
way!’
Prayers
‘Adriane I am saying a special and specific prayer right now for
your mom's strength and safety. I know it's not much but it's what
I can do. I know you are scared honey. Hugs to you.’
11
ProSocial Media
Information
‘Steph I was trying to figure out a way we could take food to
Requested
people? Any thoughts?’
Suggestions
‘With all this as a possibility. If motorists must travel or be on the
Provided
road they need to have an emergency kit prepared with some
crackers, snacks and water in the car at all times. Kitty litter as
well. A few bags if need be. They are about 3 bucks for some
cheap stuff and it will help you gain traction on ice.’
Information
‘I-95 Northbound is in good shape!’
Provided
Complaints
‘Right now, that should be illegal. These tow companies stand to
make small fortunes on the misfortune of others. They should be
given ample time to get back to their cars when it is safe to do so.
Hopefully if they are towing abandoned cars, they are not
charging people to do so, and are doing it as a means of just
helping clear the road ways.’
Provide Praise
‘Thank God for his mercy on the city of Atlanta...southern
hospitality at its finest...all the friendships create everlasting
bonds, tap yourself on the back Atlanta!!!!’
Bump
A term used when individuals would comment or reply to a post
so that it would return to the top of the page. It signified the
importance of the post and the need for others to see it.
Comments
‘Adriane, my sister is in the same boat on Roswell Road in
Buckhead. I know that doesn't help your mom, but know you are
not alone.’
Table 5 below lists the categories from the first and second snow storm and the total from
both events.
12
ProSocial Media
Table 5: SnowedOutAtlanta Categories
1st Snow Storm
2nd Snow Storm
(Jan 29th)
(Feb 13th)
Problem Resolved
6
0
6
Thanks
38
7
45
Help Needed
16
5
21
Help Offered
40
5
45
Prayers
8
14
22
Information
29
20
49
35
38
73
111
54
165
Complaints
30
14
44
Provide Praise
33
8
41
Bump
17
27
44
Comments
50
63
113
Total
414
255
669
Total
Requested
Suggestions
Provided
Information
Provided
The complaints category was divided into sub-categories which included General,
Government, and Media and is shown below in Table 8.6. An example of a General
Complaint is “Unliked and unfollowed! And my message to all the northerners making fun of
us is to find a different way to get to Florida. The Georgia border is closed to you!” An
13
ProSocial Media
example of a Government Complaint is “Let’s see if our Governor can get it straight this
time! Stop pointing fingers and create a plan, a workable plan." An example of a media
complaint is “We are not stars (We are not Chipper Jones) so for you to mention him on the
news and not ordinary working citizens about rescuing people, show your stations character
11Alive".
Table 6: Complaints: Sub Categories
1st Snow Storm
2nd Snow Storm
Total
(Jan 29th)
(Feb 13th)
General
19
14
33
Government
5
0
5
Media
6
0
6
Total
30
14
44
The Comments category was also divided into sub-categories which include General,
Petty, and Weather and is shown in Table Six. An example of a General Comment is “Stay
safe!” An example of a Weather Comment is “Lol! I'm moving to FL for the winter!” An
example of a Petty Comment is “Joan Hobble Todd I have seen your anti-Christian comments
on here and you absolutely will not win an argument with me about global warming but go
ahead and try if you're bored and desire.
Table 7: Comments: Sub Categories
14
ProSocial Media
1st Snow Storm
2nd Snow Storm (Feb
Total
13th)
(Jan 29th)
General
35
54
89
Petty
3
6
9
Weather
13
3
16
Total
50
63
113
Discussion
To summarise the results for the Giving Tuesday tweets, 16,493 tweets were collected
from Tuesday, December 3, 2013 using the hashtags #GivingTuesday and #Unselfie. After
removing duplicate tweets, 9543 remained. By far, tweets for the Salvation Army surpassed
the others with over 1800 tweets. A broad range of charities were referenced, including local
charities such as the YMCA and local parks to national, well-known charities such as the
American Heart Association and the Salvation Army. Several of the categories uncovered
interesting results. For one, when looking deeper at the Salvation Army tweets which were by
far, the largest of any charity, the tweets appeared to be generated from three tweets from
famous people with a large following. In addition, published articles about Giving Tuesday
were the source of many tweets, most of which did not identify a specific charity.
To sum up the results from the SnowedOutAtlanta posts, 371 Facebook posts were
downloaded from the group page SnowedOutAtlanta on January 29, 2014, and 235 posts
were downloaded from February 13, 2014. The main categories that emerged from the
analysis were problem resolved, thanks, help needed, prayers, information requested,
suggestions provided, information provided, complaints, provide praise, bump, and
comments.
While it is not possible to determine how many of the tweets and re-tweets actually
generated a donation to a specific charity we do know that the Huffington Post reported that
donations for this year’s Giving Tuesday drive were up 90% over last years, which could
15
ProSocial Media
indicate that the on-line activity provided a GivingTuesday with a much broader support
base, and that it indeed provided a forum for real activism. The SnowedOutAtlanta2014
analyses, however strongly supports the contention that not all on-line use is of the Slactivism
variety. In this case, real needs were identified and real help was given and documented,
largely as a result of the ability to connect more than 50,000 on-users. Especially in
SnowedOutAtlanta, individuals went beyond the walls of their WiFi connections and took to
the streets to help those in need. These two events provide a powerful argument against the
‘Slactivism’ debate. The theory that Prosocial Behaviour online does not exist and that it is
just a venue that promotes a lazy form of activism coined “Slactivism” (Morozov, 2011)is
proven wrong with the two social media events studied in this article. Both events went
above and beyond ‘clicktivism’ and ‘slacktivism’ and were true examples of online Prosocial
media in action. Although Giving Tuesday and SnowedOutAtlanta are just two examples,
they are strong cases of helping behaviour being effectively carried out through social media
sites. These two cases are also strong arguments against the idea that meaningful activism
requires strong, robust, organizational structure as well as strong-tie relationships. Even with
the weak tie relationships of twitter members and the members of the Facebook Group
‘SnowedOutAtlanta,’ significant prosocial action was achieved. In addition the only “strong,
robust, organizational structure” that was required was creating an online group that can be
achieved in a matter of minutes. Strangers went out of their way to pick up stranded
passengers, or provide shelter, and deliver food and water to those in need. If they couldn’t
help in that way, many provided useful suggestions and information online. Also, Michelle’s
foresight, and initiative in creating ‘SnowedOutAtlanta’ clearly resulted in a unique
communication media where help could be offered and received that could not have occurred
prior to social media’s creation.
This is not to say that the tweets and posts did not exhibit negative aspects of social
media. For example, the Salvation Army reported that their online kettle donations were $2.4
million this year, only a $.3 million increase over last year (Goldberg, 2013). Given the large
number of tweets in the short time after the Austin Malone tweet, indicate slactivism was
present as well. Also back and forth arguing occurred multiple times on the
‘SnowedOutAtlanta’ Facebook page. One comment about religion or one use of foul
language word could spark multiple posts among some of the group members. Posts about
helping others could quickly morph into a religious or philosophical debate that escalated
quickly.
16
ProSocial Media
Another interesting finding was the significance of tweets by Famous twitter users.
The popularity of Salvation Army tweets benefited greatly by the first tweet by the famous
pop singer, Austin Mahone and as mentioned in the results section, many famous artists
helped charities by tweeting about them and others quickly followed their lead. This
highlights the importance of a strong following on twitter. Twitter popularity is essential to
get the word out and create online activism on this social media venue.
Indeed, there were limitations to this study. For one, these are just two isolated events
that occurred and cannot be used to generalize. But with that said, Giving Tuesday is an
annual online giving event, and SnowedOutAtlanta is being used as a guide for putting social
media to good use during disasters. In addition, a content analysis was used to analyze the
data. Although a content analysis is beneficial in identifying themes and patterns in the data,
its strength does not lie in strong statistical tests. This is another reason why the data cannot
be generalized. Yet, the data provides a strong starting point in understanding activism on
social media sites.
There are also many directions for future research. For one, data for the individuals
who posted the tweets and Facebook posts were not collected because of the nature of the
study and the limitations in collecting online data. Future research could examine certain
demographics and variables of the participants compared to online activism. Another
direction for a future study could be a stronger statistical analysis to pinpoint some of the
variables contributing to online activism.
Giving Tuesday 2013 and SnowedOutAtlanta were two real social media examples
that provided valuable insight into Prosocial Behaviour online. The both provide strong
arguments against the negative outlook on Online Activism coined ‘Slacktivism’ and provide
evidence that pairing the unique connecting tools of social media with Activism and
Prosocial Behaviour is a powerful unison.
17
ProSocial Media
References
Aronson, J. (1994). A pragmatic view of thematic analysis. The Qualitative Report, 2(1),
2(1).
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research
in Psychology, 3, 77–101.
Christensen, H. S. (2011). Political Activities on the Internet: Slacktivism or Political
Participation by Other Means? First Monday, 16(2).
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3336/2767 [last
accessed 23 January 2013].
Conroy, M, Feezell, J.T., & Guerrero, M. (2012). Facebook and political engagement: A
study of online political group membership and offline political engagement.
Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), 1525-1546.
Coleman, S., and Blumler, J. G. (2009). The Internet and Democratic Citizenship: Theory,
Practice and Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garner, N. (2014). In Atlanta snow storm, it’s social media to the rescue. Retrieved 3rd June,
2014 from http://www.ajc.com/news/news/in-snow-storm-its-social-media-to-therescue/nc6Kc/.
Goldberg, E. (2013). Giving Tuesday smashes records, spurs 90% donation spike. Retrieved
12th June 2014 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/givingtuesday_n_4391367.html.
Golsborough, R. (2011). 'Slacktivism' is Becoming the New Activism. Community College
Week, p. 13.
Howitt, D., & Cramer, D. (2008). Introduction to research methods in psychology (2nd ed.):
Pearson Education.
Joffe, H. (2011). Thematic analysis. In D. Harper, & A. Thompson (Eds.), Qualitative
research methods in mental health and psychotherapy: An introduction for students and
practitioners (pp. 209-223). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
18
ProSocial Media
Kavner, Lucas (2012, October 30). Hurricane Sandy: Red Cross, Other Relief Organizations
See Social Media As 'Double-Edged Sword' For Relief Efforts. Huffington Post.
Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Kendall, J. J. (2014). SnowedOutAtlanta creator named Marketer for Good. Retrieved June 4,
2014 from http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/printedition/2014/03/21/snowedoutatlanta-creator-named-marketer-for-good.html?page=all
Morozov, E. (2010). The net delusion: The dark side of Internet freedom. New York: Public
Affairs.
Lee, Y.H. & Hsieh, G. Does slacktivism hurt activism?: the effects of moral balancing and
consistency in online activism. In Proc CHI 2013, ACM Press (2013), 811–820.
Sollicito, M. (2014). SnowedOutAtlanta: How I Used Facebook To Bring Atlanta Together.
Retreived June 4, 2014 from
http://www.facebookstories.com/stories/53769/snowedoutatlanta-how-i-used-facebookto-bring-atlanta-together.
19